Are You Focused on Finding a Lie or the Truth?

If you only focus on catching someone in a lie, you may miss the truth.

People will say, “I know he’s lying,” when they really mean it appears there is a lie. What they know is that something seems off or that the words aren’t matching up.

You may be confident someone is withholding or skewing information; or it may be obvious they are uncomfortable. Those are keen observations, but those behaviors do not automatically mean someone is lying.

Often, I ask, “How do you know for certain they are lying?” I sometimes get responses such as: I just do. Because he wasn’t where he said he was. Because she’s a liar. Because I know her/him. You’d have to be an idiot not to know that’s a lie.

Those are responses from people who are determined to catch someone lying. Odds are, some of those people they knew were lying, were indeed not being truthful. Yet I can say with a high certainty, some of them were probably telling the truth, but the biases didn’t allow it to be seen.

Not Everything That Doesn’t Add Up is a Lie

Not everything that doesn’t add up is a lie; but it may be something they don’t want you do know, so they word it strangely in attempt to mislead you. Think how much better your relationships would be if, in the absence of ground truth, you focused on looking to verify the truth instead of concluding it to be a lie.

If you liked this article please Like, Share, and Post a Comment. As Managing Director of Concealed Statements I work with men and women who want to increase their deception awareness to avoid wasting time or money and avoid making poor decisions based on inaccurate information.